Cricket taking away India’s best athletes: Henman

Former world no.4 Briton Tim Henman said on Thursday drainage of talented athletes to cricket at a young age is acting as an impediment in India’s way of producing top tennis talents.

Henman said cricket is the biggest sport in India because everyone loves the game and are interested in it. But tennis can also be attractive to Indians only when it is made accessible to the younger generation at an early stage. “You have a lot of great athletes playing cricket and tennis’ challenge is to get more of the best athletes playing the sport. You have so many people and cricket is so popular here,” said Henman, coach of the HSBC Road to Wimbledon programme that is tasked to ‘improve Indian junior tennis’.

Henman said Indian kids should be encouraged to play tennis from a young age. “Among the pool talent when these kids are young, we need to have more of them playing tennis. Andy Murray is also a great athlete in football and golf. Athletic ability is very important at a young age.”

Delving further into Indian tennis, Henman said, “They are not good enough in singles. Leander (Paes) was good and chose to play doubles and the other doubles players are not good enough to play singles. They have to be better in all areas. One must have all abilities, tennis, physical and mental to sustain the high global standars.”